


Coping Mechanisms

by mynothingness



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: AND I LOVE THEM FOR IT, M/M, Soft Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Soft Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, they're both saps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28502655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mynothingness/pseuds/mynothingness
Summary: Joe is a packrat. Every one of the safehouses where they’ve spent a significant amount of time is sure to have stashes of his ‘junk’, as the others call it: swathes of old cloth, yellowing paper clippings, dried paint tubes, broken jewelry and loose semi-precious stones... And everyone knows better than to get rid of any of it.It's one of the things he and Nicky squabble about every century or so.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 181





	Coping Mechanisms

**Author's Note:**

> This began as just a little headcanon about Joe being a hoarder, and Nicky struggling to understand, but took on a life of its own, turning into something of a character study and an exploration of the challenges of their immortal life. Oh, and of the little things that Joe and Nicky will inexplicably argue about every now and again :)

Joe is a packrat. Every one of the safehouses where they’ve spent a significant amount of time is sure to have stashes of his ‘junk’, as the others call it: swathes of old cloth, yellowing paper clippings, dried paint tubes, broken jewelry and loose semi-precious stones... And everyone knows better than to get rid of any of it.

It's one of the things he and Nicky squabble about every century or so.

Nicky, after all, was never particularly attached to material possessions, even before he took his priestly vows. His father joked that there was never a younger son more suited to the ascetic's life. (He didn't realize that Nicky spent the night before he was sent off to the seminary curled up with his head on his mother's lap, and that he left the next morning with his mother's handkerchief and his sister's hair ribbon clutched under his cloak.) 

Joe was the sunny child who would willingly give you the tunic off his back if you needed it (and actually did on one memorable occasion, to the little beggar boy down the street, much to the exasperation of his mother who’d sewed it for him just a week before). But he would also fly into a towering rage because his older brother had smashed the delicate shells he and his younger brother had found after combing the beach for hours the previous day. (”I don’t understand you, my son,” his mother had murmured as she brushed away his tears that night.) 

It took Nicky a long time to understand it as well... It drove him crazy that Joe could hoard such junk, while at the same time have such a careless attitude towards his own incredible creations. When Joe moved from one artistic phase to the other (which happened with regularity over the centuries), he often lost interest altogether in what he’d created before, and even otherwise, he was often self-critical and dismissive of large chunks of his work. It was Nicky who painstakingly saved the sketches and poetry and paintings and carvings Joe gifted him over the years. Many didn’t survive the rigors of their travels and the ravages of time, but with care, and by learning newer methods of preservation, Nicky had enough of a precious collection of Joe’s work - his second lifetime’s equivalent of a handkerchief and ribbon. 

One of the first times (circa 1350) that they had a roaring argument over some moth-eaten shawls Nicky had thrown away (”I was going to use them!”, “You haven’t looked at them in over a hundred years!”), Yusuf had accused Nico of simply not caring about beautiful things, and Nico, stone-faced, had gone to to their room and brought back his collection to show to his love for the first time. “I care about the things that matter,” he’d said, and Yusuf had melted. 

That had been that... For a while, at least. 

In time, Nicky came to realize that Joe held on to things because there was so little in their life they could hold on to. Theirs was an existence untethered from time and space. Eventually everything they loved crumbled and disappeared even as they lived on, and they never had a chance to put down roots, to actually belong like they once did long ago, to have a space that held all they cherished the most. And so he held on to bits and pieces that reminded him of people and places past, scattered in safehouses closest to that elusive concept of ‘home’. 

Nicky understood, he really did. The trouble arose when the hoarding collided with what Joe called Nicky’s ‘mad cleaning sprees’. These struck every once in a while, when they returned to a safehouse after a long gap, and it had fallen into a state of disrepair. More often, it happened when they came to one to recover after a bad mission, to give themselves time to heal from the trauma they’d undergone. 

That’s when Nicky would clean and clean and clean like a man possessed for three or four days straight, flinging open doors and windows, clearing out cupboards and cabinets, sorting through books, clothes, rugs, beddings, and belongings they’d left behind, washing anything that was in usable condition, and flinging out the rest. He called it a cleansing and purifying ritual that was necessary for them to continue living like something approaching civilized beings. Joe suspected that it was closer to a nesting ritual, a way to create order out of the chaos, and give Nicky a sense of control over his immediate surroundings when they had so little over anything else in their lives. Indeed, when the whirlwind of cleaning settled, and Nicky cooked his first proper dinner in his newly set up kitchen, whichever nondescript safehouse they were in always felt a bit closer to home.

Unfortunately, that was when Joe invariably discovered that one of his precious hoards had been disrupted, and a rare Joe-Nicky spat would break out. 

The first time Nile witnessed one, her mouth fell open in shock, and she turned towards Andy, who just leaned back in the couch and gave her a crooked grin. Nile realized she wasn’t going to get anything more out of her and turned back to watch the two men who were now yelling (she’d never even heard them raise their voices against each other in all the months she’d known them) about... old Coke bottles?

“... I kept them safely for a reason, Nicky!”

“They were under the bed and covered in cobwebs...”

Joe flung his hands out. “They can be washed! I needed them...”

“We’ve been back here twice in the last 70 years, and I didn’t see you take them out either time!”

It eventually emerged that Joe was so upset because the color of the bottles was perfect for the a crushed glass artwork he’d been planning to capture the beauty of Nicky’s eyes. Nicky, of course, melted completely. 

“Saps,” Andy muttered under her breath, going back to the TV. 

Nile suppressed her own grin. “Uh, Joe," she said, looking over at where the two saps were currently cuddling, “you know I can probably source those bottles for you online right?”

And that was that... For a while at least. 

*


End file.
